The end of POTS?

[dsk]

The POTS will not be closed in 2017 in Norway!
At least the press tells so:  http://www.nrk.no/sognogfjordane/fasttelefonen-far-leve-vidare-1.11982461
Or here: http://www.digi.no/932353/beholder-den-ekte-fasttelefonen

One key word is DSLAM  Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer 

What do we actually get?

When you read what they actually say, the customer will remain connected to the old copper pair, but what they have in the exchange building may change. 

So what do we get?  IP-telephony with a huge adapter bank.  The government has released the demand of uninterruptible telephony during power-outs.  (The mobile network has a demand of 4 hours battery backup) 

We are fooled again. ...and again.  ....   ..... 

dsk

[twocvbloke]

I can understand that, when I got fibre installed here (the Fibre-to-the-Cabinet or "FTTC" type), I asked the BT Openreach guy where it was connecting, and the fibre portion connects to a DSLAM in a nearby street cabinet and is joined onto the copper pair feeding the vDSL signal into the copper, whereas the copper line itself continues to run between exchange and the Master socket, providing regular, exchange-powered analogue telephony...

So what is received in this house is the best of both worlds, a traditional phoneline that works in a power failure, and high speed internet access at minimal cost...

Though I'm sure someday they'll be removing the copper portion and ordering us to use ATAs at somepoint, but that's probably a while off yet, we're usually about 20 years behind everyone else...

[AE_Collector]

TwoCV, do you have fibre to your home or just copper to your home? Here we have the traditional ADSL service which in most cases is fibre to a cabinet where it joins up with the copper from the CO and the copper pair carries on with dial tone and ADSL service to your home. But more and more areas are being converted to fibre to the home and most new areas are fibre (only) to the home. When the fibre runs all the way to your home here, in most cases they are no longer using the copper for the phone line if there even is copper.

Sounds the same there but I wasn' able to determine if you have fibre to your home for ADSL or just to the cabinet "close" to your home.

Terry

[dsk]

We have no fiber in our street, only copper.  About 3.5 km to the exchange building.  Just a few hundred meters to the nearest neighborhood with fiber.  When they got fiber the cable was just put under the top of the soil, sometimes a few centimeters under the vegetation.  The copper cables are dogged down about 1-1.5 meters deep.

(looks a little strange here please help me if the text should be changed)

Regards from Norway

dsk

[twocvbloke]

TwoCV, do you have fibre to your home or just copper to your home?

It's copper to the home, but a few hundred meters away is the cabinet where the fibre access is and they somehow piggyback the copper line that goes back to the exchange onto that cabinet's vDSL equipment, we're not that close to having FTTH (Fibre to the Home) as standard yet (costs a lot to have it installed right now), even FTTC is limited, so most people have to suffer from slow ADSL (ours was 1.8Mbps on a good day with our last provider)...

I just decided to get the "fibre", even if it's not true fibre, as PlusNet were offering 40down/20up free for 6 months and £50 cashback, though if I had waited a tad longer the free period could have been longer!! 

We're definitely not losing copper POTS any time soon in this country, it's just got to carry more stuff over it in the meantime...

[GLadstone]

Hi Everyone,

We still have POTS through AT&T and are often told we will need to upgrade to Uverse ASAP as POTS will no longer be available after 2020.

Recently, an AT&T representative also stated that POTS will no longer be an option after 2020 as "the State of California would no longer be allowing copper lines."

This reference to California regulation / law and the year 2020 got me curious!

In trying to find the truth behind the "sales pitch" I came across a number of articles that may also be of interest to this community:

Northern CA:
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/05/07/call-kurtis-investigates-are-phone-companies-phasing-out-traditional-landlines/

Bay Area, CA:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/05/at-t-pushes-to-end-landline-service.html

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/20/att-aims-to-pull-plug-on-traditional-landlines/

Southern CA:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20160426-column.html

---

When searching for "ATT 2020":
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-the-cloud-att-tells-its-workers-adapt-or-else.html

Take care,
GLadstone

[dsk]

We do still have copper line, and POTS, but what is in the other end of the copper line?   Answer IP telephony of some kind.
We will probably go for IP telephone during 2017 due to the cost of having the old copper line.

dsk

[twocvbloke]

Same here, copper's not going anywhere in the UK for a long time, only new-builds (if they're lucky) are getting Fibre to the Premises services, while everywhere else gets left behind with only ADSL and vDSL (aka Fibre to the Cabinet) as the only options for "high speed" internet access, but retaining analogue telephony because it's just too reliable to get rid of...

Looking up the numbers, as of August 2016, almost 800,000 people in the UK have fibre to the home, sounds like a lot, but, when you consider the entire UK population totals around 65 Million people (as of 2015, so probably more now), it's pretty much a fart in a jacuzzi at the moment, so copper's here to stay for 10 to 20 years at the least, unless BT-Openreach step up their game to replace copper lines with fibre...

[dsk]

We are getting fiber here during the spring, the dug up the the road, and it pops up a plastic tube where the property boundary are, and the rest is the house owners responsibility (me), so I have put the tube up the garage wall, and stripped it to the air cable in to the house, and down in a closet.  I Really hope that is OK.  The property is mostly stones, so digging is not a good option.  Most of the neighbors said no thanks, we stick to the copper and ADSL. Not sure what is the smartest, but we may keep the POTS if we want, but it will cost about $40 extra pr month. I have to find someone who lets me use my own ATA at the SIP account.

dsk

[dsk]

Some of my older links in this thread has went dead, and it seems not practical to post pictures of Norwegian text for you to read.
After some pilot projects the complete end of POTS is delayed, It is of-course a matter of costs, where it is kilometers between the houses, fiber is expensive for elderly users not interested in anything else than a phone, and something to transfer alarms of different kinds.  Not easy to handle via mobile.   DSLAM may be a solution.  It is almost as expensive to run an exchange with almost no subscribers, so the bills are getting bigger and bigger. so that is a way to force other solutions to win.

dsk

[andy1702]

What happens to fibre lines in the event of things like earthquakes or hurricanes?

If I came across a broken telephone cable in the aftermath of a disaster I dare say I could twist the pairs together myself and restore it. But if I came across a broken fibreoptic cable what could I do?

Seems like this has been given no thought whatsoever to me. The more you rely on the normal electricity supply to power things like digital exchanges, domestic ATAs & routers and fibreoptic repeaters, the less robust the communication network will be. And as for cell phones... assuming the cell tower remains powerd up, how long does your battery last these days without plugging in?

Andy.

[dsk]

You are completely right, we have started on shutting down th FM net, and DAB will be the only, and just a few days after the first FM senders was shut down, huge areas were out of radio for many hours due to a fiber failure.

dsk

[andre_janew]

I have received no notice of POTS ending here in Kansas.  Nothing in the phone bill or in the advertising mentions the end of POTS.  I'd like to hear from members in other states in the US to maybe find out if California is the only state doing away with POTS.

[trainman]

Probably depends on your carrier. Verizion territory they techs have been instructed to not repair copper lines. Instead they want to give the customers a wireless interface for their home line.

ATT is transitioning to uverse. But no, no fanfare or advance notice. I expect you will wake up one day and be forced to changeover, or have nothing.

[AE_Collector]

So I read somewhere that AT&T is pushing Satellite TV now that they bought who...Dish(?) and are not pushing Uverse as it is more expensive to provision than Satellite which is already set to go. And whatever I was reading showed net loses of Uverse TV customers. While the cost factor may be true that seems unbelievable to me that they would stop building and provisioning for the future and would push Satellite TV instead.

Here we are installing Fibre to the Home like crazy, building and upgrading IPTV (same system as Uverse) and decommissioning Satellite TV once customers can be converted to IPTV.

Has anyone heard anything about Uverse TV backing off?

Terry